Today in a press release, AT&T announced that it will be purchasing equipment from telecom manufacturers Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson to build out its 4G LTE network. AT&T has field trials of LTE planned for later this year, with commercial deployment sometime in 2011. If everything goes according to plan, the carrier lovingly nicknamed the Death Star will start rolling out 2,000 new 3G cell sites in 2010. Terms of the agreement between the three companies ensure that any new 3G equipment that is deployed will have the capability to be easily converted to LTE for the 2011 roll out, so don’t let that scare you off. Also of note: Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson currently supply AT&T with their 3G networking equipment. More →

We never thought we’d see the day when a pair of phones would actually make the Lego Phone we scooped seem interesting, but that day is upon us. Behold the Alcatel OT-707 and OT-800, a pair of entry-level handsets that will do little to up Alcatel’s street cred. Touting design cues from the late 80s and specs from the late 90s (ok fine, 2002ish), this dynamic duo from Alcatel-Lucent won’t be turning any heads — in a good way at least. These handsets have their place in the entry-level market however, though even entry-level phones are typically a bit better endowed than the OT-707 and OT-800 these days. As always however, money talks and these handsets are set to retail at €95 ($120) and €100 ($126) respectively so they’ll surely find a few good homes somewhere. Hit the jump for some more pics and specs.